Chasing the scent of Love, Truth, Beauty, and Mirth, wherever it may lead.

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Convention Hangover 2016

Sorting Through

The Dumpster Trash

It’s
finally official. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) will run against Donald Trump (R-NY)
for President of the United
States. Two weeks of back-to-back
political conventions highlighted the drama, and of course the lines are
clearly drawn.

Or are
they?

According
to what the parties want us to believe, it’s a contest between I versus we,
proud white male versus uppity feminist, strict Daddy versus kind Mommy.

Sky and Sarah

But after
watching all but a couple hours of the two-week political extravaganza, I’m
reminded of Sky Masterson, the slick New
York City crap-shooter, and Sarah Brown,
the Salvation Army social worker who scolds him for his profligate ways, in the
1950 musical Guys and Dolls.

I mean,
it’s just theater, right?

Or is it?

—————

As I’ve
said before in the Thinking Dog’s Journal,
I supported Bernie from the start, exulted in his unexpected primary victories,
and felt that terrible sinking sensation in my gut when I realized he wasn’t
going to make it.

I found
his release of his campaign highly honorable, and I found his re-entry into the
convention rank-and-file totally appropriate. It must have been painful for him
to be there and hear the party leaders’ speeches of praise for his triumphant
rival. But, unlike Bush, Kasich, Cruz, and a few other of the original 17
Republican contenders for the most powerful position in the world, Bernie did
not betray any sign of the sore loser. He did the right thing to the end.

Now some
of his followers are saying he betrayed the movement he started and are
abandoning their loyalty to him. They will vote, they say, for Green Party
candidate Dr. Jill Stein, or they will not vote for President at all.

Jill Stein Rally

I
understand these reactive sentiments. I also think it’s a kind of tragedy that
in these times when we never needed true wisdom and vision in a leader more, we
are looking at two candidates who don’t exhibit a whole lot of either.

Trump is
probably not the millennial version of a Caesar or a Hitler, though it’s tempting
to make the comparison. Hillary is probably not another Eleanor Roosevelt or
Margaret Thatcher, though I suspect she’d like to be both.

But
that’s part of a problem I’m having with this election. Trump seems to be
branding himself as a strong man who’s going to come in and fix everything,
especially security, as if he were renovating a grand, historic hotel. Hillary,
on the other hand, thinks the hotel is just fine as it is and only needs her
guiding hand to maintain and expand its services to more of its guests, not
just the few living in the penthouse suites.

But,
while Hillary I’m sure is a compassionate and sincere advocate for the
poor—single mothers and children, especially—there’s no doubt that her advocacy
expanded broadly when she realized Bernie was winning primaries with his
democratic socialism. Did it trouble anyone else that Hillary became a
socialist in the primaries when she wasn’t one before? What’s to stop her, once
the campaign is underway, from reverting—or, as they say, pivoting—back to her
former moderate positions on what constitutes a fair and just society?

Then,
too, it strikes me there’s little difference between her and Trump when it
comes to war. Her defense of social programs for poor children, adults and the
elderly—exceeding anything I’m sure even Trump would endorse—comes with a very
large commitment to military spending as well. Lyndon Johnson made that same
mistake.

LBJ

She promises guns and butter while Trump promises guns and maybe
butter but guns before butter, which is what any hawkish Democrat would
revert to as well.

So while
the Republicans are losing their firm lock on conservative social values and
policies, they’re getting red meat from Trump on guns, war-readiness, and
America-first-again style patriotism.

Clinton argues
that America is
already first, and a legion of Democratic stars took to the podium at the
convention to sell that certainty. Biden was the most strident and, in my
opinion, the most offensive, turning the convention into a nationalist rally.
If the Republicans want to make America first
again, the Democrats want to make it clear that we are now, always were, and
always will be USA! USA! USA!

But there
does seem to be a peculiar difference between the Trump convention and the Clinton
convention that one might not expect.

Trump was
almost universally opposed by traditional Republican top guns all the way up to
the convention. Some still refuse to endorse or support him. Yet he won, it
seems, fair and square.

It’s not
clear that Hillary did. The release of the DNC emails revealed the party
apparatus itself plotted against Bernie. Is it credible that the Clinton
campaign knew nothing about that?

According
to videos posted on YouTube by Bernie supporters on the floor, there apparently
was also manipulation of the seating in the convention hall, controlling where
the Bernie supporters could sit. Devices identified as “white-noise boxes,” it
was reported, were mounted above the Bernie sections so their chants and boos
would be muffled on television.

Dirty
tricks. Where’s the fairness? The justice? The respect for an honest dialogue
among the candidates with the voters left to decide which one will serve their
country best?

No, that
part of the shiny hotel on the hill didn’t get polished in time for the
convention, so organizers tried to keep the cameras away. Can anyone believe
Hillary didn’t know about those dirty tricks, didn’t approve them? Trump says
Hillary will say anything, do anything to win. Is he right? Some obvious
evidence points that way.

Trump’s
long harangue, worthy of satire in many a comedy club for a long time to
come—even Tim Kaine picked up on that—was somehow interesting.

Tim Kaine

How did this guy
get there out of all those traditional Republican rote scholars? Apparently not
by cheating.

And
that’s a problem. Indisputably, Hillary has a long history of public service.
We can debate whether her service has been wise or tainted, but there can be no
doubt she knows the present system and capably navigates it. That’s her
advantage.

But her
legitimacy will always be in doubt because she—or those who work for
her—cheated to give her unfair advantage in the primaries and even at the
convention, after nomination was assured.

The
Democrats feared a repeat of 1968, when radicals turned their convention into a
police riot outside. They didn’t want anything like that again. So they
repressed the opposition—subtly. It may have looked fair and square, it may
even have been legal, but it was still dirty politics.

And
that’s the problem with this election. Thanks to Bernie, Hillary’s got to
campaign on some progressive issues she has never fully supported before. But
that makes her sincerity suspect.

Trump, on
the other hand, has some ideas about personal freedom that are attractive to
both libertarians and many on the left. But he’s a hard-core conservative on
defense and national security and denies climate change. These are bigger
issues than social issues. They put the whole premise of the western
democracies—continuing growth, onward and upward forever—at major risk of
collapse into another dark age. Bernie called climate change the single-most pressing
crisis facing our world, never mind the country. Hillary puts it in her laundry
list of action plans. Trump ignores it. Disappointed Bernicrats say, “At least
we got it in the platform.” But that’s not the same as winning the election,
and we all know it.

It’s
strange to feel that the times may not produce the hero we need to lead us
through the years of clear and present danger ahead. But that’s how it feels.
And maybe that’s a sign that the world is changing far more than we realize,
when, in a time of multiple global crises, America does
not rise to the challenge. Some other country takes the baton and stylizes the
next era of global politics.

Will
democracy continue to expand and evolve in the world that’s coming to be? Or
will we lapse into some form of dictatorship as changes spin out of official
control and anarchy threatens our streets?

A Star Is Born

I wish
that were the clear choice in this election. But it’s not. So far, it’s a
choice between a star-studded Democratic campaign of nostalgia and glamour, with our politicians the biggest celebrities of all, and a Republican party
stitched together, a patch-work of criminal Christianity, the separation of
business and state rather than church and state, using the threat of terrorism
at home and abroad to restore order in the homeland.

Missed Kiss

Some fucking choice. Who wrote this movie? Oh, yes, that’s one thing everyone agrees
on. Ronald Reagan wrote this movie. We’re all in Ronald Reagan’s movie. A
multi-generational saga.

As Bill
Bendix famously used to say on the ‘50s TV sit-com The Life of Riley, “What a revoltin’ development this is.”